Tag Archives: being single

I’d like to preface this article with what I hope is an exciting announcement. As I write this, I’m preparing to move to a new place. By nearly every measure, it’s a good thing. My living situation is set to change for the better.

Without getting into the specifics, just know that I’ve been living with roommates in a shared house for quite some time now. That has been my standard living situation since college. For a while now, I’ve been looking to upgrade that situation by buying my own condo. I’ve been working hard, selling as many sexy novels as I can, to scrap together enough money.

Finally, I had the money and I found the perfect place. In less than a month, I’ll be living on my own in a beautiful one bedroom, one bathroom condo that I won’t have to share with anyone else. I won’t just be able to sleep naked anymore. My entire living situation will be clothing optional. Just thinking about it brings tears of joy to my eyes.

I’m genuinely excited about this and not just because it will provide more opportunities for nudity. However, it does give me some pause in terms of the larger implications. Every major change in life, be it a living situation or a new lover, is bound to have unforeseen impacts. Moving to a new place certainly qualifies.

The most jarring change in this instance is that, for the first time in my adult life, I’ll be living completely alone. I won’t have to contend with roommates. I won’t have to share any ounce of my living space. Everything from the thermostat to the brand of toilet paper to the visibility of my Playboy calendar will be completely under my control.

I don’t deny that living alone has its appeal, but I’m somewhat used to always being in a place where I could just go talk to someone if I wanted. Living in this new place will mean fewer opportunities of that nature. Then, I found this distressing article from the New York Times on the potential health hazards of living alone and suddenly, the price for clothing-optional living seems a bit higher.

The hazards are not necessarily trivial. This isn’t something that can be fixed by eating an extra bowl of fruit, running a few miles, or getting a coffee enema, which is a thing. According to the article, these are some of the issues that loneliness and isolation can breed.

Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.

However, there is some relevant data behind this phenomenon of loneliness being detrimental to someone’s mental health. According to a 2013 study by the American Journal for Public Health, socially isolated men and women died earlier at a rate that was consistent with smoking and high blood pressure. Those kinds of correlations are disconcerting, even if they’re not akin to direct causation.

While I do have plenty of other social outlets, primarily my friends and a very supportive family, living alone will make it easier to keep to myself more often. Granted, that could change fairly quickly if I fall in love and get into a relationship. That’s something I am actively working on. However, I’m not going to assume that’ll happen soon after I move in.

For some people, living alone is not just a casual preference – it feels more like a need. What happens when you are deprived of a genuine need? You can’t stop thinking about it. You daydream about it, makes plans for when you will get to have that need fulfilled again. When living alone is a need and you finally get to do it after being deprived, you feel relief and a sense that your living situation is once again just what it should be.

So with these variations in mind, I’ve got a lot to think about as I prepare to take this big step in my life. I’m still excited about it. I’m really looking forward to actually owning my own place, having a space I can truly call my own. It goes beyond having an excuse to spend more time naked. It’s about me carving a real space for myself.

I don’t know entirely how I’m going to handle it. I like to think I know myself well enough to believe that I’ll be among those who benefit from living alone. I could very well be wrong, but I’ll finally have a chance to find out.

To everyone else who may be facing this issue, take some comfort in the knowledge that the question as to whether being alone is bad for you has no clear-cut answer. It varies from person to person. Some people benefit. Some people don’t. Human beings are kinky like that. As an aspiring erotica/romance writer, that’s something I can appreciate.

Whenever we hedge our bets on something, be it a major life decision or a poker game, it’s often a tacit admission that we may fail and more often than not, that’s the first step towards failure. Being careful or proactive doesn’t give the impression that you’re all that confident. A lack of confidence is also not very sexy either so some people may not be inclined to be that careful.

Granted, there are some bets we don’t mind hedging on. Why else would we buy insurance or demand that our heart surgeons be licensed? It doesn’t matter how confident you might be. There’s nothing sexy about getting heart surgery from the medical equivalent of a drunk plumber.

We, as a society, are somewhat erratic about the things we should and shouldn’t hedge our bets on. There’s a constant push and pull between being proactive and being bold. We want to sound confident, but we also don’t want to risk crashing a drag racer into a hill just to get laid.

With that in mind, here’s a simple questions that we’ve all probably asked ourselves, albeit indirectly. Just how proactive should we be when it comes to our love lives? I’m not talking about avoiding parents or wearing condoms either. Specifically, I’m talking about marriage and how we approach it. Even more specifically, I’m talking about prenuptial agreements.

It’s somewhat telling that most people don’t know much about these fairly mundane, legally-binding contracts that have been around for decades. They’re not complex financial laws or esoteric provisions of the tax code. A prenup is a simple, legal way to ensure that if a marriage fails, the hard, heartbreaking work is already done.

It also has an unspoken, but distinct stigma to it and for entirely understandable reasons. The mere act of considering a prenup for your marriage implies that you think it’s possible it may fail. When you’re young, in love, and still having great sex, who wants to think that? Hell, if your lover even joked about it, what would that reveal about your relationship?

However, celebrities and the super rich have a lot more to lose than their hearts in a marriage. It’s understandable that they’d be more proactive than most. Unfortunately, it also means that celebrities are more than twice as likely to divorce. That may be another part of why prenups have a bad reputation. They’re loosely correlated with more divorce.

That brings me back to the title of this article and the obvious question that too few people ask. Do prenuptial agreements help a marriage or are they detrimental in the long run? Based on what I’ve just explained about the mentality behind prenups, the answer would seem obvious. That’s just it, though. We really don’t know.

I’ve talked about it before, albeit in part. This time, I want to be a bit more blunt. To all those worried about declining marriage rates, increasing divorce rates, and young people humping without consequence, I have an important message that needs to be belabored.

If you’re a man, marriage for is a TERRIBLE deal.

I know it sounds like I’m just echoing timeless words of Al Bundy, but bear with me. In order to show just how bad a deal marriage is for men, allow me to paint a scenario. It’s not a thought experiment because this is, for all intents in purposes, how it plays out in the real world.

You and your lawyer are sitting across the table from a potential partner and their lawyer. Their lawyer presents you a partnership contract. In that contract, it says that you are to only ever conduct personal business with them until the day you die. If, however, the other party decides to dissolve the contract at any time and for any reason, then they get half of your assets, by default. If you happen have any children, the partner very likely take sole custody of them, as well. Would you sign that contract?

Most people, if they looked at the fine print in that scenario, wouldn’t sign that contract, even on a dare or while drunk. It’s a horribly unequal contract. It effectively asks the man to go against his own interests. It also gives the woman a distressing amount of incentive to end the marriage. When there’s a financial incentive to do anything, it usually skews the odds. Marriage is no different.

This scenario also reflects the impact that “no-fault divorce” has had on marriage in recent decades. That’s a fairly recent development, as well. Instead of needing a reason to dissolve a marriage, it can be done on a whim and the man, who may not have even done anything wrong, gets screwed over. In that context, the decline in marriage is entirely understandable.

So what would happen if every marriage from here on out required a prenuptial agreement? Moreover, what would happen if the structure of the marriage made the responsibilities between the man and the woman equal? It’s an honest, sincere question because, as an aspiring erotica/romance writer, I’m all for love. I’m all for marriage. I too would like to get married one day.

However, marriage in its current state doesn’t just scare me. It seems downright unsexy. It almost seems to take advantage of men who are so hopelessly in love that they don’t think about what will happen if something goes wrong . Granted, no man wants to think about that, especially when they’re in love, but it can cause a lot of pain and heartache down the line.

I’m not saying prenuptial agreements will fix the current state of marriage or gender dynamics between men and women. However, I do think that we’re straining our ability to love each other when our relationships are so inherently unequal. I’ve championed love between equals in the past. I think that’s the kind of love that will improve our love lives, our sexy lives, and our marriages in the future.

There are a lot things I wish I learned in school. In talking about various conflicts between love versus sex, perception versus reality, and violence versus the horror of seeing exposed nipples on a TV screen, I’m reminded of just how badly school prepared me for the world. Granted, I was miserable at school, but at least learning something would’ve softened the blow.

As much as I loathed school, there is one skill I wish they had taught. That skill involves finding love, forging relationships, and actually connecting with someone romantically. This feels like one of those incredibly important skills that we should all learn at a young age. Most kids figure out how to maximize the benefits of orgasms. Far fewer learn how to enjoy the benefits of loving relationships.

My family, as much as I love them, has been giving me the same advice since the Clinton Administration. They say, “It’ll happen when it happens.” They could say the same thing about me playing the lottery, which is not very discouraging. I’m over 30 now and being single at this age is starting to really concern me for reasons that may affect my ability to describe my personal life with a straight face.

I get it. Romance is one of those things you can’t predict. Nobody can really control how they fall in love or who they fall in love with. That’s a big part of what makes it so exciting and mysterious. It’s why romance/erotica writers like me have an audience.

However, finding romance is not like playing the lottery. It’s not one of those things that is complete and random chance. Our ability to find love is, unfortunately, one of those skills that varies from person to person. Some are just better-equipped than others.

I’m not just talking about women who have big tits and good social skills. I’m not just talking about men who have six-pack abs and a fat bank account either. Those aren’t skills. Those are a product of a genetic lottery and/or an ability to afford a good plastic surgeon. We can’t really control those factors. However, there are some we can control.

In finding love, there are a few skills that are more vital than most. We need to know how to communicate. We need to know how to empathize, read body language, and present ourselves in a compelling, affectionate way.

Some say these skills are innate. They’re part of being human. I say eating is part of being human as well, but some are far better at doing it than others. We can’t put the eating skills of a chef at a five-star restaurant on the same level as someone whose diet consists primarily of Doritos and Ramen noodles. For a skill like finding love, we need to know more than the ingredients.

This is where the issue becomes personal for me. Growing up, and all throughout my schooling, I did not develop good social skills. I wasn’t a total pariah, but I was often defined by my social awkwardness. I would avoid crowds. I avoided talking to others in class. I made few friends. Naturally, I was miserable. Being a self-centered little shit, I didn’t realize my misery was mostly my fault until I became an adult.

I’ve done my best to catch up in recent years. Going to college, getting a job, and becoming closer to my family has helped me gain some of the skills I failed to learn in school. I think I’m a better communicator now than I was in my early 20s. I can carry on a conversation and not sound like a regular on “The Big Bang Theory.”

That said, if one of my old teachers were to grade my skills, I’d be lucky to get a C at best. I am still, despite my best efforts, very socially awkward. I struggle to start conversations. I struggle to approach people. I really struggle to seek out the opposite sex and express a romantic interest.

This has already hindered my personal life in many ways. I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I went on a date earlier this year. I met a girl through a friend and we went to see the X-men movie together. I thought it went well at the time. Now that I look back on it, I think I my social awkwardness sent the wrong message. There were other mitigating circumstances, but I don’t think I did my part to show my interest.

Would learning more skills in high school have helped? Would I have gone on another date with that girl if I had been a bit more skilled in the art of romance? I don’t know. I can’t know for sure. However, I do know that this is a skill I need to work on in my personal life, if only to help me relate to the romance/erotica I write.

In terms of skill, writing has always been one of my strengths. I sucked at a lot of things in school. Essay questions and papers wasn’t one of them. Ask me to carry on a conversation with a stranger and I’ll be lucky to avoid a slap in the face. Ask me to write an essay or craft an elaborate story and I’ll flex my skills like an oiled-up body-builder.

If I am going to find love one day, it probably won’t be through my conversation skills. It’ll probably come through my writing skills. In that sense, my ability to craft good romance/erotica isn’t just vital for my career. It may very well determine whether or not I find the love of my life. The stakes are pretty high, but if I’m going to confront this conflict, I might as well do it with my greatest skill.